Working-class people desire welfare-state measures while fearing equality itself.
Evidence
The upper working class, and the lower middle class, support specific measures embraced in the formula “welfare state,” which have equalitarian consequences. But, so I shall argue, many members of the working classes do not want equality. They are afraid of it. In some ways they already seek to escape from it. Equality for the working classes, like freedom for the middle classes, is a worrisome, partially rejected, by-product of the demand for more specific measures. Inequality has values to them which have been overlooked. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2139
Categorization
- XREF: Extends the Frankfurt-school theme (in The Frankfurt School volume) of the authoritarian personality and working-class ambivalence toward emancipation — and Fromm’s ‘escape from freedom’ directly invoked here in 2138. — connects to: Working-class individuals often fear equality rather than desire it.; Working-class voters fear equality and value inequality — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2139; Working-class men would fear and resent genuine equality of status — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2233 (+9 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive inversion of the Marxian teleology that the oppressed class naturally desires its own full emancipation — worth sitting with alongside the reader’s strategic essentialism question about whether subordinated groups actually want the radical change imputed to them.
Broader Connections
- Working-class men would fear and resent genuine equality of status
#corroborates(0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2233 - Working-class individuals often fear equality rather than desire it.
#corroborates(0.85) - Working-class voters fear equality and value inequality
#corroborates(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2139 - Equalitarian proposals threaten the meaning of working-class effort and sacrifice.
#expands(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2261 - Working-class men defend inequality to justify their own sacrifices
#expands(0.85) - Working-class men resist status equality from fear of rejection by superiors
#corroborates(0.85) - Working-class respondents universally saw equal incomes as destroying life’s incentive
#corroborates(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2250 - Working-class anxieties about upper-class rejection dampen support for equalitarian movements
#complicates(0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2243 - Workers’ claims of equality express self-respect, not moral or spiritual beliefs
#qualifies(0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2195 - Working class people rationalize the status quo through meritocratic beliefs
#expands(0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2232 - Self-respecting Black demands for immediate equality terrified mainstream white Americans.
#complicates(0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 818 - Perceived status threat drives white opposition to welfare spending
#qualifies(0.70) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1158